More Filipinos shifting to e-wallets
The use of cash in the country continued to decline as more Filipinos transition to mobile wallets for their payment methods with such a momentum expected to remain strong moving forward.
The latest consumer payment attitudes survey of leading global digital payments Visa showed that the use of cash slipped to 87 percent in 2023 from 96 percent in 2022.
Visa country manager Jeffrey Navarro said the use of mobile for payments has increased to 87 percent and that of card payments to 70 percent.
“In the past, there used to be a big disparity between cash, mobile and cards. But what we’ve seen now is that mobile payments are more or less synonymous to cash,” Navarro said.
“The momentum for attempting to go cashless has remained strong and the confidence year-on-year has been increasing,” he added.
Navarro attributed the improvement to the role of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to transform retail payments to digital as part of their national agenda and transformation roadmap.
He said the BSP worked with a lot of partners, mobile wallet operators and financial institutions, among others to create products and services that can be easily accessed by consumers.
“And of course because of COVID-19. It forced us to stay at home and to really learn how to use digital payments and because we used it in our daily way of making payments in the past, it stuck with us,” Navarro said.
The survey revealed that 83 percent of Filipino consumers attempted to go cashless in 2023 while 43 percent of them carry less cash in their wallets versus a year ago.
Filipinos also managed to not use cash for at least 10 days. Visa noted that one in three consumers believe that the Philippines will be a cashless society by 2030.
Nonetheless, Navarro maintained that trust could not be built overnight but the growing confidence and acceptance for cashless has been significant.
“We are happy because at least there’s a view from the consuming public that we are going that direction, and it’s good that we can be part of that and enable it,” Navarro said.
Based on the study, mobile topped the option for wallet payments followed by QR payments, which was used by at least half of each age group except for boomers.
Visa also noted a diversification of real time payments as 49 percent of Filipinos have already used RTPs and 66 percent of them use it at least once a week.
For cross border QR payment, 37 percent of Filipino consumers have used such mode given its convenience. Visa emphasized that barriers to using such include perceived lack of safety and lack of knowledge.